|
Chapter 8: Workforce Investments |
Social
Security Strategic Goal: To be an employer that values
and invests in each employee. |
he years from 1993 through 2000 marked significant
changes in how the Social Security Administration (SSA) treated
and invested in its workforce. The legacy of downsizing in
the 1980s had a profound effect upon the Agency, and in the 1990s,
the impending Retirement Wave of the Agency’s workforce received
serious consideration. Attempts to ameliorate these issues,
added to the other forces and advances in a rapidly changing workplace
environment, obliged the Agency to focus on its workforce.
SSA recognized the need to reflect the public it served, resulting
in great advances in diversity. The relationship between its
management and employees was recognized to be vital, and the Agency
became a leader in partnership with labor. Technology and
other advances in the workplace were beginning to be implemented
with the goal of helping the workforce to be valued, efficient,
and effective.
The impetus for change was stimulated by the Clinton Administration.
Just before the second inauguration President Clinton and Vice President
Gore called the new Cabinet to the Blair House to discuss the issue
of reinvention. They gave the Cabinet a set of papers that
was subsequently published in January 1997, called the Blair House
Papers containing the principles and ideas for agencies to use to
make further inroads towards better process designs and customer
service enhancements.
Up to 1994, before independence, the Agency focused heavily on customer
service initiatives. The Blair House Papers emphasized the
importance of focusing on the Federal workforce – getting the best
from employees and raising the spirit of employees. The results
of National Performance Review’s (NPR) benchmarking studies indicated
that the best in business organizations devoted substantial resources
and attention to employee development and satisfaction. In
addition, literature spoke to a strong and direct link between employee
satisfaction and customer satisfaction. With this as the backdrop,
the Agency embarked on initiatives to listen to the concerns and
better understand the needs of its employees
In 1998, Vice President Gore directed the NPR to conduct the first
ever government-wide employee satisfaction survey, the NPR/OPM government-wide
Employee Satisfaction Survey. The survey was sent to 34,000
federal employees selected at random, including 750 Agency employees.
The survey created a baseline for measuring selected reinvention
initiatives, assessed and benchmarked organizational change on key
items, built on the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Performance
America database, and supported the collection of a set of balanced
measures for federal agencies. The survey was conducted again
in 1999 and 2000, reporting on and analyzing the results and developing
an improvement strategy. [1]
The Agency initiated its own surveys to better understand its workforce.
The Agency Strategic Plan included an objective “to promote an Agency
culture that successfully incorporates our values,” a part of the
Agency goal “to be an employer that values and invest in each employee.”
As a first step toward achieving this objective, the Office of Workforce
Analysis conducted an employee survey, the Organization Culture
Survey, to help determine what the Agency’s organizational culture
is, what it should be, and any gaps. A workgroup then reviewed
the results of both the Culture Survey and the results of the NPR/OPM
Employee Satisfaction Survey, and they developed an improvement
plan including both short-term and long-term actions to address
any shortcomings. [2]
In early FY 2000, the Agency began plans to implement the employee
measurement strategy of the Market Measurement Program (MMP).
[3] Based on research that indicated employee satisfaction
was most strongly influenced and determined at the local work unit
level, a plan was developed for a comprehensive satisfaction survey
that would provide information about satisfaction with the local
work environment. This survey was intended to support and
complement the Culture Survey because the it provided the Agency
with information at the organization level and identified issues
that need addressing. It also identified issues that may lend
themselves to local solutions, but the information was not aggregated
in a way that enabled the Agency to focus at this level. The
MMP employee survey would solve this gap by focusing at the local
level, and would also enable the Agency to address work place improvements
identified in the OPM/NPR employee surveys.
In September 2000, the Agency hired a private contractor to plan
and administer a test of an employee survey process that would:
·
Provide up-front communication prior to conducting the survey
to explain the purpose and importance of the survey to employees
and managers;
·
Ask questions market tested and validated to link to employee
productivity;
·
Be simple in order to increase the likelihood of a higher
response rate; and
·
Include a process for using the survey results using full
participation of employees in planning improvements in their work
unit based on the results.
The success of this initial pilot will result
in its full implementation of the survey process for all employees.
More importantly, during the years from 1993 to 2000, the entire
Agency grew to fully recognize that increased public trust and faith
in the Agency and the programs it administers can only occur if
the Agency demonstrates that it is a well-run organization whose
employees feel valued and well-treated.
Diversity
n September 18, 1998, the Advisory Board
on the President’s Initiative on Race concluded its work and presented
a report containing its final recommendations to President Clinton.
The report contained the Board’s observations on what they had seen
and heard about race and its impact upon communities throughout
the country. The President’s Initiative on Race later evolved
into the President’s Initiative for One America, and President Clinton
established a permanent White House Office on the President’s Initiative
devoted to helping bridge the racial and ethnic divides in our society
and to working to forge new coalitions across lines of color and
class.
In keeping with the President’s Initiative for One America, in his
Oath of Office address, newly appointed Social Security Commissioner
Kenneth S. Apfel, affirmed his commitment to establishing a diverse
workforce. He stated, “[A]s the Agency enters the next century,
we should continue to strive toward achieving a workforce that is
like America: young and old, male and female, African American,
Caucasian, Hispanic, Pacific-Asian, Native American, those with
disabilities and those without.”
Although the President’s Initiative for One America was not instituted
until 1998, the Agency has a long history of activities supporting
the Initiative that precedes 1998. Throughout the period from
1993 through 2000, Special Emphasis Programs, Special Emphasis Managers,
and Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Advisory Groups had an instrumental
role in promoting cultural diversity within the Agency. The
Agency developed and monitors an Affirmative Employment Plan that
identifies the representation of equal employment opportunity groups
in its workforce, and recruitment efforts are targeted to address
under-representation. EEO Advisory Groups were established
to advise the Commissioner regarding the employment concerns of
women, minorities, and disabled employees as well as the service
delivery needs of the Agency’s customers. The Agency also
used special hiring authorities to recruit employees with disabilities,
and provided reasonable accommodations to enable these employees
to have a level playing field.
Programs
and Policies
pecial Emphasis Programs were established
in response to Presidential Executive Orders. The programs [4] were the Asian Pacific American Program,
Federal Women’s Program, Hispanic Employment Program, Minority Concerns
Program, and the Program for the Employment of Persons with Disabilities.
The Asian Pacific American Program was established in 1992 to give
attention to and focus on that fast growing, complex, and diverse
group which had previously been part of the Minority Concerns Program.
The Federal Women’s Program was established to enhance employment
and advancement opportunities for women. The purpose of the
Hispanic Employment Program was to ensure that Federal employers
recruit and hire Hispanics and once hired, provide them with career
development opportunities. The Minority Concerns Program was
initially established to address the employment concerns of African
Americans, Asian Pacific Americans, and Americans Indians, and to
improve services to their communities. The Program for Employees
with Disabilities gave technical advice, leadership, and guidance
to managers in providing greater career opportunities to employees
with disabilities.
EEO Advisory Groups were also formed to advise the Commissioner
and other Agency managers of the employment and service delivery
concerns of their constituencies. The advisory groups were:
·
Black Affairs Advisory Council (BAAC);
·
National Advisory Council for Employees with Disabilities
(NACED);
·
Hispanic Affairs Advisory Council (HAAC);
·
Pacific Asian American Advisory Council (PAAAC);
·
Women’s Affairs Advisory Committee (WAAC); and
·
American Indian Alaska Native Advisory Council (AIAN).
These groups met periodically with the Commissioner
and other members of the Executive Staff, pursued initiatives of
interest to their groups, and held training conferences where employees
and management came together to talk about service delivery, recruitment,
training and career development and advancement. For example,
the mission of HAAC is to ensure courteous, respectful, and sensitive
treatment of all clientele, including non-English speaking persons.
HAAC pursues this goal by educating others about the shared responsibility
to provide services with sensitivity, and by advocating for and
supporting the recruitment, development, and advancement of Hispanic
and bilingual persons throughout the Agency.
Affirmative
Employment Program
|
SSI Training Class resembles United
Nations. |
The
Agency had an Affirmative Employment Program (AEP) Plan for women
and minorities to assess the state of equal opportunity in the Agency.
The AEP Plan was a tool to strengthen EEO for women and minorities
by identifying specific areas of under-representation, barriers
to equal opportunity, and concrete actions to correct identified
deficiencies. The completed plan contained:
1)
Program analysis detailing the status of affirmative employment
efforts within the Agency;
2)
Description of identified problems and barriers in personnel
and management policies, practices, systems, or procedures; and
3)
Statement of objectives and action items to resolve identified
problems and barriers.
Numerical objectives were established when
the workforce representation of an EEO group is severely below their
corresponding civilian labor force (CLF) representation. The
purpose of numerical objectives was to attain a workforce that was
reflective of America; the objectives were goals, not quotas, stated
in terms of a percentage of available opportunities.
A separate plan, the Affirmative Action Program Plan for People
with Disabilities, addressed the hiring, placement, and advancement
of individuals with disabilities. Additionally, the Agency
used a Disabled Veterans Affirmative Action Program Plan to enhance
employment opportunities for disabled veterans. The AEP program
enabled the Agency to identify imbalances in the workforce and take
corrective actions.
The SSA workforce consisted of 62,394 full-time and part-time permanent
employees as of FY 1999, a decrease of 2,979 employees since FY
1993. While the workforce has decreased, it has become more
diverse as a result of increases in the representation of women,
minorities, and employees with disabilities. The overall representation
of women and minorities in the Agency exceeds their representation
in the (CLF). [5] Women make up 70.7
percent of the Agency’s workforce compared to 46.5 percent for the
CLF. Minorities make up 40.2 percent of the Agency’s workforce
compared to 27.2 percent for the CLF.
As a result of targeted recruitment efforts, the workforce representation
of Black men, Hispanics, Asian Americans, American Indians, and
employees with disabilities have increased since FY 1993:
Recruitment
Strategies
In 1980, the Agency had over 84,000 employees, with this number
decreasing over 20 percent during the downsizing that occurred between
1980 and 1989. While the staffing level as of FY 2000 was
close to 62,000 full- and part-time employees, workloads continued
to grow and were predicted to rise even more as the “baby boomers”
reach retirement age.
As of FY 2000, the Agency possessed a mature workforce; the average
worker was 46.7 years old and had an average of 20 years of Federal
service. As large numbers of experienced employees prepared
to leave, often with 25-35 years of service, the Agency recognized
that those who follow were not likely to remain in the organization
for such lengthy periods. These facts helped shape the new
recruitment and retention strategies needed.
In 1996, the General Accounting Office (GAO) provided a report to
Congress entitled SSA Faces Challenges. The report
stated, “[the] SSA must build a workforce with the flexibility and
skills to operate in a changing environment.” In 1997, the
GAO reported to Congress with the report, Significant Challenges
Await New Commissioner. This report described challenges
surrounding the issue of building a workforce with the flexibility
and skills to operate in a changing environment, including a changing
employee and client base.
In 1997, the Agency published its first strategic plan since independence,
and the importance of workforce planning was reflected in the Agency
Strategic Plan (ASP). One of the objectives listed in the
ASP was “to create a workforce to serve SSA’s diverse customers
in the 21st century.” The Agency recognized the
need for the workforce to reflect the diverse population it serves,
both today and as demographic changes occur in the future.
To accomplish this, both a short-term and a long-term recruitment
strategy to recruit employees from historically underrepresented
groups were developed.
In October 1998, the Agency compared its diversity profile with
the CLF and determined that it was severely under-represented in
three EEO groups: Asians, Hispanics, and persons with severe
disabilities (PWD). Further, based on the Census Bureau’s
year 2000 projections, without a concerted recruitment effort, this
gap between the CLF and the Agency’s workforce would widen for these
three groups. In response, the Agency developed a short-term
recruitment strategy to begin eliminating this gap and to take itself
through the FY 1999 recruitment cycle.
The strategy proposed consisted of four action items:
·
Advertising career opportunities via the internet and in
key minority periodicals;
·
Providing an e-mail application process;
·
Establishing and/or strengthening our ties with State employment
and vocational rehabilitation offices and secondary education placement
centers; and
·
Establishing multi-disciplinary recruitment teams with hiring
authority to visit predetermined colleges and universities and attend
recruitment fairs.
While this short-term strategy was in effect,
the Agency made greater use of the Schedule A
[6] and Outstanding Scholar [7] hiring
authorities to recruit new employees from underrepresented groups.
In addition, the Agency had also utilized the Office of Personnel
Management’s Certificates of Eligibles to find candidates for employment
who did not qualify under the aforementioned hiring authorities.
In May 1999, the Agency introduced its long-term strategy to address
the under-representation of Asians, Hispanics, and employees with
disabilities. This strategy expanded upon the framework already
established in the short-term strategy and was designed to promote
the Agency as the employer of choice. The long-term strategy,
which is intended to carry the Agency through the year 2013, includes
a marketing strategy, formal recruitment methodologies, and a system
to monitor progress and hold components accountable.
In specific, the long-term strategy included:
·
Improving and expanding the recruitment relationships with
colleges and universities that have high concentrations of the under-represented
groups in their student populations;
·
Creating stronger networks with State vocational rehabilitation
and employment offices and the Department of Veterans Affairs in
all states, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Isles;
·
Using displaced private industry employees as a recruitment
source;
·
Using employment incentives (e.g., recruitment signing bonuses,
a tuition reimbursement program, hiring at higher grade levels,
paying relocation expenses, etc.) to attract top computer science
candidates;
·
Advertising extensively in key publications marketed to targeted
populations;
·
Investing in promotional items (e.g., pens, cups, notepads,
mousepads, keychains, mini-flashlights, etc.) with SSA logo for
distribution at recruitment events;
·
Participating in the President’s Committee for Employment
of Persons with Disabilities Workforce Recruitment Program; and,
·
Developing tailored recruitment packages for regional and
field managers, including a pamphlet entitled “Working for Social
Security” and other employment information.
As a formal recruitment methodology, the
long-term recruitment strategy recommends the establishment of multi-discipline
recruitment teams to conduct on-campus recruitment at predetermined
schools, advertise vacancies, and maintain an Agency presence at
career fairs. The teams are to include a Personnel Office
representative familiar with hiring authorities, an employee from
the group targeted for recruitment with whom potential candidates
can identify, and a representative from component for which candidates
are being recruited who can talk about the available positions.
As a result of implementing our recruitment strategies, the Agency
in FY 1999 and FY 2000 hired Asians, Hispanics, and persons with
disabilities at a rate significantly greater than their representation
in the CLF. In FY 1999, the Agency hired a total of 2,603
new employees, and in FY 2000, as of August 30, 2000, the Agency
hired 2,366 new employees:
FY 1999
FY 2000 (thru 8/30/00)
CLF*
Asians
181 (7.0%)
154 (6.5%)
3.7%
Hispanics
602 (23.1%)
547 (23.1%)
11.4%
PWD
285 (10.9%)
161 (6.8%)
5.9%
As depicted in the charts below, the workforce
representation of Asians, Hispanics, and persons with disabilities
is moving steadily closer to parity with their CLF representation.
10/1/98
9/30/99
8/30/00
Net Change CLF*
Asians
1.9%
2.3%
2.57%
+0.6
3.7%
Hispanics
7.7%
9.2%
9.9%
+2.2
11.4%
PWD
1.9%
2.6%
2.7%
+0.8%
5.9%
In 2000, the Agency received recognition for its progress when Equal
Opportunity Publications (EOP), an outside organization, published
a cover article calling SSA a model employer for improving the representation
of persons with disabilities in their Winter 1999/2000 issue of
CAREERS & the disABLED magazine.
American
Indians and Alaska Natives Initiative
Although American Indians and Alaska Natives were not under-represented
in the Agency’s workforce, their numbers in the CLF had been so
small they were not initially included along with Asians, Hispanics,
and persons with disabilities for special recruitment activities.
In March 2000, the Agency hosted an American Indian and Alaska Native
Service Delivery Conference in Denver, Colorado to explore how to
better serve and represent these communities. The conference
served as a catalyst shifting attention and focus to this group.
The conference was attended by representatives from over 120 tribes,
and the Conference’s programs and activities focused on ways to
increase their representation in the Agency’s workforce and improve
outreach and service delivery to American Indians and Alaska Natives.
As a result, the Agency established an American Indian and Alaska
Native Executive Steering Committee to develop and implement projects
that would achieve the goals of increasing the workforce representation
of American Indians and Alaska Natives and improving services to
their communities. These goals included such steps as establishing
a Cooperative Education Program [8] for students
of Tribal Colleges and Universities and establishing a formal relationship
with the National Indian Council on Aging so that it could access
the Council’s extensive database on the public information needs
and demographics of American Indians and Alaska Natives. In
addition, the Agency developed a communications plan targeting American
Indians and Alaska Natives.
The Agency also promoted the cultural awareness of its own workforce
to the needs and concerns of this constituency group. A two-part
interactive teletraining video series was broadcasted, delivering
cultural and awareness training. Part I provided a broad prospective
of the diversity in American Indian and Alaska Native cultures.
In Part II, an Agency panel of American Indian employees representing
various tribes discussed Social Security claims, legal and urban
issues, and views from life on reservations.
Disabled Individuals:
Reasonable Accommodations
The Agency has always prided itself in providing reasonable accommodations
to the known physical and/or mental limitations of qualified applicants
or employees with disabilities (EWD).
In 1993, the Agency began purchasing adaptive devices and personal
computers configured with adaptive device software/hardware.
The Office of Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity continued to manage
the Agency’s Full Time Employee (FTE) Pool that provided readers
for blind and low-vision employees, personal assistants for severely
mobility-impaired employees, and sign language interpreters for
field offices with several deaf employees. In 1993, the Agency
employed 450 employees with severe disabilities.
In 1994, SSA further progressed in dealing with its disabled employees.
An Assistive Device Support Help Desk was established in the Agency’s
Model District Office to take calls from employees experiencing
technical difficulties with their adaptive hardware/software, and
the Agency began the Accessible Computer Configured Employee Support
System (ACCESS) project. The ACCESS project had oversight
responsibility for purchasing adaptive technology and upgrading
obsolete equipment (i.e., its work became part of the Agency’s procurement
projects), providing employees with disabilities full accessibility
to the Agency’s computer systems environment.
The Agency received recognition for its progressivism. On
September 8, 1994, the Agency received a “Golden Hammer” Reinvention
of Government Award to recognize the Agency as “Heroes of Reinvention”
for integrating adaptive hardware and software into the Agency’s
infrastructure and designing training programs to meet the needs
of employees with disabilities. In addition, on October 20,
1994, the ACCESS workgroup was presented with an HHS Secretary's
Continuation Improvement Recognition award for their efforts ensuring
that Agency employees with disabilities would have full access to
the new IWS/LAN system.
During 1995, the Agency provided reasonable accommodations to 575
of its employees with disabilities. [9]
It awarded contracts that significantly improved accessibility for
employees with disabilities:
·
Training for employees with disabilities provided computer
and adaptive devices at the employee’s worksite (generally on a
one-to-one basis), nationally.
·
Provide voice-activated computer workstations to employees
with mobility impairments (i.e., voice-activated systems allow employees
who do not have total use of their hands or upper bodies to use
computer programs “hands free”).
The first Agency wide contract for sign language interpreter services
for deaf employees was awarded in June 1995.
[10] The contract was established to support the needs
and provide reasonable accommodation for deaf employees, and it
provides for nine full-time on-site interpreters at Agency headquarters
as well as providing for interpreter services in field offices.
In addition, an Employees with Disabilities inter-component Workgroup
was formed to prepare for the large deployment of 1,742 local area
networks and 56,600 computer workstations nationwide; the workgroup
made the necessary plans and performed integration testing to insure
that assistive technologies would be part of the national IWS/LAN
rollout.
The Agency was again recognized for its progress in 1996.
The Ford Foundation and the John F. Kennedy School of Government
selected the Agency as one of 25 finalists (from 1,560 applicants)
for the 1996 “Innovations in Government Award” sponsored by Harvard
University; the Agency was awarded a grant of $20,000.
As the national IWS/LAN rollout entered 1998 and 1999, the Agency
processed another 450 and 430 IWS/LAN site orders, respectively,
for employees with disabilities. In recognition of its successes,
the Agency received the Stevie Wonder Vision Award-Siemans Award
of Excellence [11] and the City of Baltimore Mayor’s Commission
for Disabilities Kurt L. Schmoke Public Employer of the Year Award.title>
[12] The Agency also provided refresher training[13] on adaptive equipment.
In addition, the EWD Workgroup designed a resource site on the Intranet
to provide information for employees with disabilities and their
managers regarding available devices and other helpful suggestions.
This workgroup was given a special budget under the Agency’s Diverse
Workforce Key Initiative to use for special needs such as preparing
training materials in accessible format and for ensuring that all
training centers were accessible to employees with disabilities.
In 2000, the Agency processed over 500 reasonable accommodation
requests, and in adherence with recent Executive Orders,
[14] continued its long-standing commitment to hiring people
with disabilities through its competitive hiring process and the
Selective Placement Program. In support of these Executive
Orders, the Agency committed itself to hiring 1,300 additional persons
with disabilities, or 13 percent of its hires for FY 2001-2005.
Once hired, the Agency strived to insure that employees with disabilities
were provided with equal opportunity in the workplace environment.
Throughout the Clinton Administration, the Agency worked hard to
make its workforce accurately reflect the community it serves.
By doing so, the Agency is better equipped to serve the public in
an appropriate, effective, and efficient manner. While the
Agency is not underrepresented as a whole in minority employees,
targeted recruitment of specific underrepresented groups such as
Asian Americans, Native Americans, and persons with disabilities
led to large gains in both the recruitment and retention of these
groups. Detailed initiatives to retain these underrepresented
groups complemented these recruitment efforts, and with leadership
initiatives from Commissioner Apfel, great strides were made.
Partnership
n 1993, President Clinton signed Executive
Order (EO) 12871, “Labor-Management Partnership,” mandating federal
agencies to involve employees and union representatives as full
partners to identify problems and develop solutions to accomplish
the Agency’s mission. By working in partnership with the American
Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the exclusive representative
for approximately 50,000 bargaining unit employees, the Agency hoped
to foster a much closer relationship between
the union and management to create tangible benefits in service,
cost-effectiveness, productivity, efficiency, and quality of its
work environment.
Prior to EO 12871, the history of labor-management relations in
many federal agencies was one of internecine conflict; SSA’s story
was similar. Labor-management relations were strained at best
and dysfunctional at worst. However, the Agency applied itself
to implementing EO 12871 vigorously, and both its management and
union leadership saw an opportunity to break out of old patterns
of behavior. It is this joint commitment, reaffirmed in the
2000 SSA/AFGE Ratification Agreement,
[15] that has made partnership
an effective effort.
To address and formalize partnership at the national level, the
National Partnership Council (NPC) was formed in 1994 comprised
of high-level members in both the union and the Agency.
[16] The charter was signed on June 22, 1994, and it
stated its purpose to be “…to design, implement and maintain within
SSA a cooperative, constructive working relationship between AFGE
and management to identify problems and craft solutions.”
The NPC strove to improve the day-to-day operations of the Agency’s
service delivery; help the leadership make better decisions than
would be possible under traditional bargaining and consultation
procedures; develop a framework within which management and the
union can draft effective partnership decisions; and ensure that
the process should be interest-based (i.e., that the legitimate
needs and interests of all participants must be examined and understood
before generating options).
The NPC’s objectives were:
·
Improve SSA’s service delivery;
·
Help SSA’s leadership make better decisions;
·
Deal with Agency-wide issues; and
·
Generate guidance for lower level partnership levels.
The NPC worked towards achieving these objectives
in many ways. For example, it encouraged the formation of
partnership councils throughout the Agency. Originally, these
councils were mandated to, among other things, establish alternative
dispute resolution (ADR) methods and options for informal disposition
of employment disputes.
Prior to independence, the Agency’s ADR program was rudimentary
with no coordinated approach. Since then, the Associate General
Counsel for General Law has assumed the role of the Agency’s ADR
Officer and has been the focal point of its ADR efforts. In
conformity with the Administrative Dispute Resolution Act (ADRA)
and the President’s directive on ADR, the Agency complied with the
specific requirements of the ADRA and established ADR programs in
various areas. Further, the Agency extensively trained managers
and employees in ADR techniques; these techniques have been applied
to collective bargaining and labor-management partnerships as well
as in resolving employees’ complaints of discrimination. These
initiatives resulted in a marked decrease in the number of grievances
and unfair labor practices filings.
For example, the number of arbitration requests from the period
1994 through 1996 showed a reduction from 488 requests in 1994 down
to 331 in 1996.
title>[17] The principles of ADR have
helped to reduce other types of litigation; the number of unfair
labor practice charges filed in 1993 was 382, but fell to 167 in
1999. From the period 1994 through 1999, the number of union-management
grievances decreased from a high of 465 in 1994 to only 171 filed
in 1999.
The local partnership councils dealt with issues that might otherwise
have required negotiation or litigation, and their success allowed
the scope of their work to grow from personnel issues to encompassing
the facilitation of work processes. Partnership councils dealt
with matters relating to customer service, operational efficiency,
employee empowerment, and labor-management issues. These partnership
efforts resulted in enhancements in career opportunities, establishment
of developmental programs, and joint efforts to improve family friendly
practices within the Agency.
In changing the relationship that existed between labor and management,
which was largely adversarial, the NPC provided for systematic training
of agency employees in consensus building methods of dispute resolution.
At the direction of the NPC, training programs and train-the-trainer
sessions were developed in interest-based bargaining (IBB) covering
partnership principles, conflict resolution, consensus decision-making,
and other IBB techniques. This training consisted of the following:
·
In May 1994, top Agency executives along with the AFGE Council
Presidents attended a 3-day training session that included interest
based techniques, consensus decision-making, and conflict resolution.
·
Partnership councils (20 Agency-wide) received 3-day training
sessions conducted by Syracuse University, emphasizing conflict
resolution, consensus decision-making, and IBB problem solving techniques.
The remaining councils received similar training provided by a variety
of sources, including the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service
(FMCS) and internal Agency resources.
·
By 2000, the Agency had trained a national cadre of 220 facilitators
in IBB problem solving, consensus decision-making, partnership principles,
and various tools and techniques to help group processes.
The facilitators would help address and resolve all types of problems
and issues.
As partnership councils continue to be established,
training will be an ongoing process. As the Agency and the
union work in a collaborative fashion, this training will gradually
provide the groundwork for a culture change throughout the organization.
One of the requirements in EO 12871 was for agencies to evaluate
the impact of partnership on its organizational performance.
The Agency, on July 8, 1997, formed the Partnership Evaluation Team
(PET) to conduct an objective evaluation of how the process had
been operating since its implementation. The NPC issued the
team’s report in March 1998, and it emphasized how the Agency had
benefited from working together since its inception. The issuance
of this report made the Agency the first to complete an agency-wide
evaluation of the effects of labor-management partnerships on organizational
performance, and the report identified over 1,500 activities that
have aided effectiveness and performance and that had been initiated
through or enhanced by partnership.
The PET found numerous examples of components that had been working
with divisively polarized relationships between management and their
union counterparts. After identifying these problem situations,
and then implementing jointly developed plans for partnership, many
were then able to work in collaboration. Moreover, these partnerships
often times grew beyond their initial involvement in personnel issues
and became problem-solving teams on methods to make the Agency serve
its customers better.
The NPC and the PET were recognized for their successes in September
1998 with their receipt of the John N. Sturdivant National Partnership
Award. The award cited the SSA/AFGE joint effort as “…an outstanding
example of how labor-management partnerships are meeting the National
Partnership for Reinventing Government’s goal of a government that
works better and costs less.”
The SSA and the AFGE dealt together in partnership on many initiatives
that have improved customer service (e.g., the 800 number telephone
service; systems expansion; the reinvention of work processes).
Other initiatives showing strong union and Agency cooperation included
the Agency’s 2010 Vision workgroup, which is helping to develop
the customer service plans and goals of the future.
The NPC realized the importance of sharing policies, philosophies,
and communicating with these councils, and thus sponsored a partnership
conference in June 2000. Council members, high level union
and management officials, and speakers such as Janice Lachance,
Director of the Office of Personnel and Management (OPM), and David
Feder, Assistant General Counsel of the Federal Labor Relations
Authority, communicated their views and experiences. They
also shared information about the types of resources and assistance
available throughout the federal community to assist in establishing
and maintaining workable partnerships. The NPC also used this
forum to present the SSA/AFGE Partnership Recognition Awards to
employees who had worked tirelessly and diligently over the previous
year on partnership initiatives.
The NPC chartered a second workgroup to update the inventory of
partnership projects and activities to determine if they had increased,
how they may have changed, and the types of issues being addressed
since the first evaluation report was released. In March 2000,
this new team submitted its report to the NPC, identifying a total
of about 400 new activities being taken by partnership councils.
As with the first study, the responses showed that the councils
have focused on a variety of matters dealing with customer service
and operational issues.
The President’s Memorandum on Reaffirmation of Partnership issued
on October 28, 1999, required Federal agencies to report on progress
being made in achieving the goals of the memorandum and the directives
set forth in EO 12871. On April 14, 2000, the Agency submitted
its report to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for the
President. In that report, the Agency highlighted the ways
in which we have met the objectives by citing the many examples
of partnership activities.
Since the latest report was released, the number of partnership
councils increased to 67 as of August 2000. The councils were
very productive and constructive in dealing with issues of concern
to both the union and management. Through this continually
evolving process, the Agency and its union, the AFGE, worked together
to find ways to enhance the working environment through developmental
and growth opportunities, to facilitate efforts to address productivity
and efficiency, and to limit fiscal costs to the Agency.
By taking the initiative in partnership, the SSA fostered a close
relationship between the union and its management for the benefit
of both its internal and external customers. Internally, employees
have felt more invested in management decisions, and frictions between
union and management were resolved through ADR and other less costly
and adversarial methods. Externally, suggestions for improved
work processes came directly from those performing the work, increasing
efficiency and creating cost savings for the American public.
The investment by the Agency in this initiative had borne fruit
and resulted in concrete progress.
Technology:
IWS/LAN and the Intranet
ast changing technology has significantly
affected not just how the Agency serves the public but also in how
it does its work. While its workforce is one of its most valuable
assets, technology is equally important because it is essential
to the effectiveness of that workforce and indispensable to the
success of the Agency’s business approach. By providing the
resources necessary and investing in the technology needed, the
Agency has reaffirmed to its workforce that it takes seriously the
new challenges of increased workload and government streamlining.
SSA’s investment in technology indicated the value the Agency placed
on its workforce. The years from 1993 through 2000 were characterized
by a surge of advances in providing the necessary technological
tools to its employees to perform their work. Without this
type of investment, the Agency would jeopardize its commitment
to hiring and maintaining a highly skilled, high-performing, and
highly motivated workforce that is critical to achieving the Agency’s
goals.
The Agency’s ability to meet customer expectations and service
depends on the expanded use of automation. The success of
SSA to use technology to support improved or redesigned processes
rests on a strategic technology infrastructure that provides automation
at the employee’s desktop, makes needed information immediately
accessible in electronic form, and moves toward a paperless processing
environment. The Agency established the Architecture Support
Staff to coordinate the efforts of its Information Technology (IT)
community with respect to the establishment and maintenance of an
Enterprise-wide Information Technology Architecture (EITA).
The Staff supports legal mandates [18] and
federal guidelines [19] .
While the push for better technology has been a constant through
the Clinton Administration, the urgency had varied with time and
circumstance. The early years of the Agency under DHHS were
characterized as a slow evolution. Hardware and software improvements
were done slowly without an overarching vision. There was
no clear conception of how technology was going to completely change
how Social Security does its work. Independent Agency status
allowed SSA to move more quickly in creating an automated work environment.
Commissioner Kenneth Apfel and members of his leadership team embraced
the coming changes, and provided the vision and energy to push forward
from such setbacks as the PEBES online privacy predicament.
While an important learning experience, it made the Agency slightly
cautious in its approach to technological change and risk taking.
But in recent years the Agency’s leadership had become very strong
proponents of technology, and have created the environment and the
push for SSA to become a leader in the Federal Government in technology.
Intelligent
Workstation/Local Area Network (IWS/LAN) Installation
he IWS/LAN initiative was the linchpin for
both the Agency’s customer service program and its entire business
approach. It facilitated many of the planned productivity
improvements and enabled full reengineering of the disability process,
including processing time reductions and other improvements projected
in the redesign. It will provide greater capacity and increased
processing capabilities essential for the major service delivery
and process redesign initiatives.
In 1993, the Agency’s Information Technology Systems Review Staff
(ITSRS) recommended funding strategies that included maintenance
of separate placeholders for budgeting Agency workstation/software
upgrades in anticipation of users’ needs. This actually occurred
prior to the IWS/LAN project implementation. The ITSRS also
responded to concerns expressed by the Government Accounting Office
(GAO), the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and the Congress
concerning the IWS/LAN initiative. This work helped promote
support and funding [20] from these bodies
required to move forward with an IWS/LAN strategy. They also
recommended funding strategies for wide area network enhancements,
support services, and expanded telecommunications infrastructure
required for IWS/LAN future implementation.
The original decision to provide intelligent workstations to every
employee, interconnect all the workstations by LAN, and connect
all the offices to the regional computer centers/ National Computer
Center by wide area network was made in 1993. With over 60,000
employees in over 1,600 offices nationwide, the Agency redesigned
and prepared each facility nationally with new data cables and an
upgraded electrical system.
Beginning in 1994 the Agency, with the support of GSA, began site
preparation of all Agency offices at an average rate of one office
each working day. The GSA used innovative methods to meet
the Agency’s needs in an economic manner, and mainframe computers
and specialized software were used to track the site prep process
and keep the program on schedule.
A seven-year IWS/LAN contract [21] was awarded on June 14, 1996, and it provided for
the installation of 1,742 LANs comprising 56,000 workstations at
sites nationwide. Meaningful discussions with vendors during
the acquisition process provided necessary information while protecting
the integrity of the acquisition process.
In December 1996, the Agency began the installation of the National
IWS/LAN contract, which by 1997 was completed in 487 sites.
Additional workstations and LANs were purchased and installed at
Headquarters and Regional Office locations, bringing the total installation
to 91,650 workstations and 2,129 LANs by mid-1999. In addition,
the Agency determined that it would need up to 300 additional IWS/LANs
to complete the target systems environment. In August 1999,
OAG awarded a 3-year contract, [22] which
included 6,178 workstations. The ITSRS had guided this contract,
adjusting quantities based on identified requirements and benefits.
The installation of the IWS/LAN in the Agency brought a host of
new tools to improve and enhance work processes. The Office
of Operations, responsible for direct customer support, was most
dramatically affected in terms of impact on its business process.
Technical and management staff recognized that these new tools were
a means to improve productivity and enhance communication among
its hundreds of facilities and thousands of employees. The
most immediately significant of those new tools and technologies
was the Intranet.
In recognition of its efforts with the IWS/LAN project, the Agency
received the 1994 Federal Technology Leadership Award, sponsored
by Government Executive magazine. The annual national
competition recognizes outstanding achievement in making government
more effective through the use of information systems.
Although IWS/LAN was installed in all Agency offices, the project
evolved with the changes, expansions, and relocations of the offices.
The standards set forth earlier and the processes in place, along
with the GSA help, will ensure that the Agency continues to provide
a safe and healthy work environment and reliable computer systems
to all its employees.
Installation
of IWS/LAN in Foreign Service Programs (FSP)
The Agency, recognizing the needs to improve service and work environment
in its foreign program, has installed its IWS/LAN in the Manila
DVA office and eight of the largest claims-taking FSPs.
[23] These overseas offices now have direct access to
the Agency’s databases and programs, and are no longer dependent
on U.S.-based offices to provide them with information they require
to serve foreign based Social Security customers. This results
in more efficient work processing and the ability to assist many
customers on first contact.
The
Intranet
he IWS/LAN initiative allowed the development
and utilization of the Agency’s Intranet. The Intranet is
more than the Internet in that it is a self-enclosed secure network
comprising of only Social Security servers, and can only be accessed
by Social Security employees with valid and current security clearance.
The Intranet has become the vehicle by which components communicate
with all other parts of the Agency, directly down to the individual
employee. With over 1,600 offices nationwide, each office
and each employee is no longer cut off from the rest of the Agency
due to their distance from the headquarters complex or their regional
office, but is now interconnected by technology. The possibilities
for further collaboration and future synergies are only beginning
to be realized.
More than just email, the Intranet allows a component to place the
vast majority of its information in easy reach for almost every
Social Security employee nationally. The entire resources
of the Agency were now available as easily as opening an Internet
browser. Moreover, because of its secure nature and availability
only on internal Social Security networks, the Intranet allows the
delivery of services to its internal customers in ways that are
still being discovered.
SSA
Digital Library
The Digital Library was first unveiled in July 1998 at the headquarters
complex. The size and scope of the Library was expanded in
order to reach all Agency employees nationwide by Spring 2000.
Its strength lies in its ease of use and accessibility. It
contains a catalog listing of all of the hardcopy materials maintained
by the Agency’s Library, records management information, historical
information, access to over 3,000 compact discs containing thousands
of journals, books, newspapers and magazines, and the USA PhoneDisc.
The Library also has access to online services such as Lexis/Nexis
and WestLaw and NewsEdge (an up-to-the-minute accounting of current
events worldwide). From the onset, the variety of materials
available via the Digital Library has been determined based upon
user needs and user requests. All materials resident in the
Digital Library are intended to better serve the customer base and
assist Agency employees in doing their jobs as efficiently and effectively
as possible.
Electronic
Forms Implementation
On September 1, 1993, the Agency began working on a tactical plan
for the national implementation of electronic forms. This
initiative sought to put into an electronic format as many of the
forms used by field offices as possible, thereby eliminating various
costs (e.g., printing and shipping of forms from a centralized location)
and streamlining the processing of the forms (directly into the
workstation). This initiative was part of the Agency’s strategic
priority to evolve into a paperless agency.
Over several years, the Agency continued to investigate electronic
forms and subsequently developed a contract with a vendor through
the Government Printing Office for the conversion of paper forms
into an electronic format using the FormFlow software. Initially
as a pilot, 62 forms were converted and placed on the IWS/LAN systems
of a few field offices. The success of this pilot resulted
in its wider implementation in 1999 into other field offices.
[24]
In August 2000, a SSA Forms Repository was released onto the Agency’s
Intranet, allowing most field offices access to all of the electronic
forms. The forms are provided in Adobe PDF format (Print-Only)
and in JetForm FormFlow format (Intelligent Fill-able Forms).
In addition, the Agency continued to work toward providing the general
public access to various Social Security forms via the Internet.
The Agency depends on thousands of employees across the country
to carry out its mission to provide world-class service. The
Intranet has become a vehicle for effectively communicating information
while providing employees with new tools to do their jobs more efficiently
and more productively. The next task is to successfully implement
this throughout the Agency and ensure that training is available
for the efficient use of this tool. This will, in turn, provide
the impetus for developing more creative applications to improve
work processes and employee quality of the workplace environment.
Other
Advances in Technology
ith the need to improve IT infrastructure
constantly, the Agency has made improving the its standing on technology
a key goal. Investments in technology infrastructure are necessary
to support distributed computing, web-based processing, more robust
management information, and the emergence of voice recognition and
machine language translation technologies. Large efficiencies
may be gained by linking web-based technologies with existing legacy
systems and established service delivery models. The e-SSA
Technology Strategy report released in November 2000 described
Social Security’s transition plans and highlights the productivity
gains that the Agency expects to realize from the planned infrastructure
upgrades.
Another key component was the need for regular hardware refreshment.
The Agency’s technological infrastructure must be refreshed at regular
intervals to keep up with the rapid pace of technological change.
The Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner have pushed to reduce the
Agency’s procurement cycle for new IT equipment from seven to three
years. The decision to move to a three-year refreshment cycle
meant that every Agency employee will have a new workstation by
the end of 2002.
Between FY 2000-2002, the Agency will spend $45 million a year to
replace its 91,650 existing workstations and make limited upgrades
to the supporting infrastructure of servers, printers, laptops,
scanners, controllers, etc. As an initial step, in August
2000 the Agency purchased and began installing 40,000 personal computers
in the first phase of this three-year cycle. [25]
Another improvement was to the telecommunications network infrastructure.
An adequate telecommunications infrastructure was required to support
Social Security’s electronic service delivery initiatives, without
which the Agency would not be able to take full advantage of current
and future technologies. In August 2000, the Agency entered
into a contract to obtain new “frame relay support” equipment and
installation. This more efficient technology doubled the capacity
of the Agency’s telecommunications lines; improved response times
for network-based applications; improved manageability and reliability
of the Agency’s computer network; and enhanced support for new network
video and telephone services. As a result, all employees on
IWS/LAN will have Internet access on their desktop by December 31,
2000.
The Agency also invested in an integrated human resources system.
By using customized, commercial off-the-shelf software, this new
system automated processing of personnel, administrative, and service
functions. It also provided automated support for human resources
management activities, including online ad hoc information retrieval.
In addition to the technology upgrades to improve customer service,
the Agency also made several technological upgrades to improve its
administrative processes. The Agency automated several processes
including ordering supplies, processing purchase orders, and supporting
electronic commerce. These advancements in technology reduced
Agency operating costs by over one million dollars annually.
The Agency also implemented video teleconferencing, a project to
acquire the necessary technology to provide two-way video and audio
that is used for training and public service announcements.
Numerous technological enhancements were made to the 800 number
service. The Agency installed automated services, both in
English and in Spanish so that callers are able to conduct business
transactions 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The software
to improve caller access was also updated, and these improvements
have greatly improved customer satisfaction with the 800 number
network.
The Agency embraced the National Performance
Review’s recommendation to expand electronic commerce for Federal
acquisition by conducting an electronic commerce pilot in 1997.
Use of the Internet and electronic commerce was expanded in each
subsequent year. The Agency posts all of its acquisition notices
and solicitations on its Internet home page, allowing interested
vendors to read and download them. In FY 1999, the Agency
discontinued the old practice of mailing paper copies of these documents
to vendors. Contracting opportunities are announced exclusively
by electronic means. All of the requirements are posted with
the Electronic Posting Service, [26] which will, in the near future, be the
one place a vendor needs to go to see all Government requirements.
These electronic commerce methods are faster and more economical
(i.e., saving the cost of printing paper copies of solicitation,
labeling and mailing them, and maintaining a bidders mailing list),
and benefit vendors who register with the Electronic Posting Service,
including automatic email notification of Federal business opportunities
of interest to them.
Technology infrastructure will continue to evolve at a brisk pace.
It will become faster, better, and cheaper. While advancing
technology offers tremendous opportunities to increase access to
and improve the accuracy, timeliness, and convenience of its service
to the public, it also presents challenges. The Agency has
begun to restructure business processes to make effective use of
new technologies in order to meet future needs and to give its employees
the tools they need to meet the workplace demands. To support
employees and enable them to meet customer needs, the Agency will
continue to evaluate and keep pace with emerging technologies.
Succession
Planning & Training
he legacy of downsizing in the 1980s and
the considerable changes in the workplace environment has had a
tremendous impact upon the workforce of the Social Security Administration.
Agency growth in the 1960s and 1970s was followed by years of tight
staffing in the 1980s and 1990s; [27] the
reduction in workforce numbers coupled with increased workload and
the significant technological changes in how the Agency performs
its business has forced its employees to wear multiple hats at the
same time as well as learning to wear new ones. By the mid
1990s, the Agency’s workforce was “mature” with 57 percent of employees
over the age of 45, with predictions that 40 percent of the Agency’s
existing 1998 workforce would be retired by 2009. This imminent
“retirement wave” of significant portions of the Agency’s workforce,
in particular in the upper management levels, will result in a serious
continuity and succession problem for the Agency if left un-addressed.
These forces buffeting Agency employees have increased the need
for constant training to prepare them for the new challenges of
the future.
Moreover, the REGO initiatives initiated by the Clinton Administration,
under the leadership of Vice President Al Gore, reemphasized the
importance of focusing on the needs of Federal Government employees.
Reinvention and streamlining by definition and necessity requires
government employees to do more with less personnel resources, hopefully
with better infrastructure/technology resources and better work
processes. Under these initiatives, agencies were encouraged
to invest a substantial portion of savings realized from reinvention
activities to finance employee training and development.
The Agency is committed to providing the training and development
necessary to ensure that its workforce possesses the knowledge,
skills, and abilities required to meet and handle increasing responsibilities
and workloads. The Office of Training (OT) helped prepare
the Agency’s streamlined workforce for their new missions, has begun
a number of new initiatives and programs to better serve its customers
– Agency employees. The drive to provide more training, to
make it continuous, and to provide it “just-in-time” has become
paramount.
With such a large percentage of the workforce eligible to retire,
the significant loss of knowledge and experience to the Agency was
apparent. In addition, a very high percentage of those eligible
were in the management ranks. Thus succession planning and
leadership development became a key element in the Agency’s Strategic
Plan. In the spring of 1997, the Agency developed a plan to
revitalize management training and career development. Implementation
of the leadership development strategy began in 1998 leading to
the revitalization of many career developmental programs.
A key part of the Agency’s training program is recognition of the
importance of life-long learning and the importance of self-development
in attaining both personal and Agency goals. The various initiatives
are linked to leadership competencies that help to broaden employee's
perspectives and experiences.
Succession
Planning:
“We
need to double all existing career developmental programs
to help prepare for the future. There’s no reason why
we can not double the numbers of SES candidates, Advanced
Leadership Developmental people, Leadership Developmental
people, and Presidential Management Interns.”
– Deputy Commissioner
William A. Halter |
n 1997, the Agency began to analyze the upcoming
retirement wave by looking at potential retirements in the next
five years. It soon discovered that a large percentage of
employees would be eligible to retire by the year 2002, especially
at the higher grade levels. But it was not enough to only
examine how many employees would be eligible to retire; the Agency
needed to determine how many employees actually expected to retire.
By examining the number of eligible employees who actually left
the Agency on regular retirement over the past ten years, it found
that the average employee retiring on regular retirement was 61
years of age. Based on this historical pattern, a model for
projecting how many employees would retire in future years was developed.
In 1998, the Agency prepared a more comprehensive study of the retirement
wave attrition, focusing on predicting the who, where, and when
of retirement losses. Agency-wide projections through the
year 2020 showed the peak of the retirement wave occurring in the
years 2007-2009, when it was expected that approximately 3,000 employees
will retire each year compared to an average of 851 retirements
per year from 1990 through 1999.
The data analysis for the period 1999 through
2010 projected an increase in the retirements of many key positions.
For example, about 66 percent of supervisors, 45 percent of claims
representatives, and 48 percent of computer specialists were projected
to retire within this time period. [28]
The Agency later validated the model by comparing the actual number
of retirements with the number projected, and the model was found
to be a good predictor. The Agency also projected the succession
flow of new hires into key positions and the movement of employees
between those positions. This assumes maintaining current
staffing levels and the ability to backfill positions as employees
left.
A key concern was training these new employees, especially if they
came on board after experienced workers retire. If there was
no period of overlap, it will be difficult to ensure that new employees
were adequately mentored and trained in the program complexities
and the methods of providing high-quality customer service.
In March 2000, the Agency completed a study addressing the issue
of succession planning. [29] This report
identified four areas where the Agency should focus to address the
problems associated with accelerated retirement of the Agency’s
workforce:
·
“Flattening the Wave”
·
Career Development Programs (CDPs)
·
Diversity
·
Training
The Agency needed to “flatten the retirement
wave” so that the impact of leaving employees and the loss of institutional
knowledge can be spread out over a longer space of time. In
addition, the Agency needed to provide appropriate and effective
career development programs to further invest in the remaining workforce,
take advantage of the synergies offered by this new opportunity
to increase and improve the Agency’s diversity, and give its workforce
the needed tools to handle this new situation through more efficient
and effective training.
“Flattening
the Wave”
The peak of the Agency’s retirements is set to occur from 2007-2009,
coinciding with the retirement of the baby-boom generation, resulting
in an increase of workload right when the Agency’s workforce begins
losing its most experienced employees. In order to avoid a
crisis situation, the Agency needs to spread out the retirements
over more years (to minimize the impact of retirements on any particular
year) and increase its recruitment and retention practices.
From 1996 through 2000, the Agency offered early retirement to its
employees, and about 5 percent of those eligible for early retirement
took it. [30] This had the dual effect of increasing the
normal retirements for each year since 1996 and thus decreasing
the potential retirement crunch in 2007-2009. With each passing
year, the percentage of early retirements out of total retirements
has been steadily increasing (e.g., in 1999, early retirements accounted
for 50.5 percent of all retirements). These early retirements
allowed the Agency to hire 4,000 new employees from 1997-1999 as
replacements for these early retirees. By 2007-2009, these
new recruits will be experienced employees,
[31] thereby avoiding the feared experience loss and its loss
on productivity. In addition to allowing the Agency to replace
employees who would have retired during the peak retirement years,
the early retirements brings in new workers, with appropriate and
up-to-date technological skills.
This solution was not an easy choice for the Agency to take; the
exodus of present staff meant that existing workloads were that
much more difficult for the remaining staff. However, the
alternative was felt to be worse; if no efforts were made to flatten
the retirement wave, approximately 30 percent of Agency employees
would be in trainee status during the 2007-2009 peak retirement
years. [32] Another important benefit
of the presence of experienced workers was not just to process increasing
workloads, but also in the training and mentoring of new recruits.
The Agency used formal training to convey the technical programmatic
knowledge necessary for a new hire to perform their job, but this
formal training was coupled with on-the-job mentoring which is crucial
for new hires to see and apply their newly gained knowledge in practice.
Mentoring was also a manner in which institutional knowledge was
“passed on”. Moreover, while resource intensive (forcing the
Agency’s most experienced and productive employees to spend precious
time mentoring new hires), it was an investment in the future that
produced more knowledgeable and productive employees for the Agency.
The success of this effort was based on the ability of the Agency
to replace current retirement losses with new hires, and thus the
importance of hiring and retention. In FY 2000, the administrative
budget request was not fully funded, resulting in the inability
of the Agency to hire as many new people as it needs to fully replace
all the losses due to attrition and retirement. The Commissioner’s
response to Congress was to reduce the Agency’s service goals, and
the Agency attempted to do as much as possible with the reduced
resources. For FY 2000, the Agency hired approximately 2,000
new employees.
Career
Development Programs (CDPs)
One important element in preparing for the imminent wave of retirements
has been the acceleration of career developmental programs (CDPs).
Under the downsizing of the 1980s, previously existing CDPs were
suspended due to the hiring and job freeze. However, as the
issue of succession planning began to take on added urgency, the
pressing need for CDPs became obvious. They became recognized
as an important component to help prepare for the future of the
Agency.
By March 2000, the average age of a typical Social Security employee
was 46.7 years of age. [33] Urgency
to develop employee skills for the future began to build, especially
for management positions where expected losses were predicted to
be very high (the average age being even higher than for the Agency
as a whole). The Agency responded by reestablishing development
programs at the national, component, and regional levels.
From 1997 through 2000, over 1,200 people [34]
were selected for participation in these development programs
(the first four being national in scope):
·
Senior Executive Service (SES) Candidate Development Program
·
Advanced Leadership Program (ALP)
·
Leadership Development Program (LDP)
·
Presidential Management Interns (PMIs)
·
Component-level and Regional Development Programs
·
Regional Job Enrichment Programs
·
Leadership Seminars
The national CDPs complemented developmental and rotational programs
sponsored by various Agency components. The success of Agency
CDPs attracted attention both within and outside the public sector;
the Agency was benchmarked by numerous organizations (e.g., U.S.
Department of Agriculture, Central Intelligence Agency, Pension
Benefit Guaranty Corporation, and U.S. Navy). The Commissioner
was invited to speak at the National Academy of Public Administration
(NAPA) Conference in September 1999 to discuss how the Agency’s
strategic plan serves as the foundation for its leadership development
activities. These events demonstrated recognition of both
the quality and effectiveness of the Agency’s succession planning
activities and of the Agency’s investment in the workforce.
Senior Executive Service (SES) Candidate
Program:
Initiated in June 1998, this national program for selected grade
15 employees is a two-year program developing the competencies needed
for SES positions. It also seeks to broaden their experiences
and leadership abilities through training and assignments. [35] Selected potential candidates had to undergo
a rigorous competitive assessment process, and in FY 1998 the first
cohort of 36 employees was selected by the Commissioner.
Advanced Leadership Program (ALP):
Initiated in October 1998, this national program for selected employees
in grades 13 and 14 is a two-year program consisting of training
and assignments designed to help participants develop the competencies
required by mid-level leaders. The candidates received temporary
promotions during their participation in the program. In FY
1998, 35 employees were selected.
Leadership Development Program (LDP):
Initiated in March 2000, this national program for employees in
grades 9-12 is also a two-year program featuring training and assignments
to develop the competencies required by first line leaders and supervisors.
In FY 2000, the first cohort of 61 employees was selected to participate
in this program. The candidates received temporary promotions
during their participation in the program.
Presidential Management Intern (PMI)
Program:
In 1977, President Carter issued an Executive Order 12008
[36] establishing the Presidential Management Intern (PMI) Program.
It is designed to attract to the federal service outstanding graduate
students (Master’s and Doctoral-level) from a wide variety of academic
disciplines who have an interest in, and commitment to, a career
in the analysis and management of public policies and programs.
The two-year internship program enables graduate degree students
to be appointed to federal positions as PMIs and to have the opportunity
to convert to a permanent federal civil service position.
All cabinet departments and more than 50 federal agencies have hired
Presidential Management Interns.
Since 1997, the Agency has increased its participation with the
PMI program (run by the Office of Personnel Management [OPM]), and
over 129 PMIs have been selected as of 2000, making the Agency one
of the leaders in this national program.
Component-level and Regional Development
Programs:
Agency components and regions were given the mandate to establish
their own CDPs. From 1997 through 2000, hundreds of employees
have been selected to participate in these programs. A good
example of a regional program was the Chicago Upwards Bound (CUB)
Program in Region V for grades nine through twelve employees.
This one-year competitive CDP was designed to enhance the careers
of journeyman personnel in the region who have demonstrated leadership
potential. An example of a component led CDP was the Operations
Leadership Developmental Program (OLDP) that was run by the Office
of Operations. This CDP was similar to the national Leadership
Development Program.
Regional Job Enrichment Programs:
Several regions have established programs to broaden the experience
of their employees. For example, in the Seattle Region from
1997 thru 2000, 379 employees have been selected for its Job Enrichment
Program, where employees from grades 1-14 participate by gaining
experience in another job for a period of 120 days. The Chicago
Region also runs two similar programs; the Chicago Employee Exchange
and Rotation Program (CHEER) [37] and the
Chicago Managers Exchange Program [38] .
Both of these programs seek to give employees and managers, respectively,
the opportunity to request a temporary work assignment in another
office or component for five to 30 working days.
Training
istorically, training was conducted within
the framework of the traditional classroom. However, with
approximately 63,000 employees scattered in over 1,600 sites nationwide
plus training responsibilities for the state disability examiners
(who adjudicate disability claims for the Agency), issues such as
timeliness, consistency, and funding for travel became increasingly
problematic by the early 1990s. The same technology that
enabled the steady evolution from paper-based processes to one
relying increasingly on computer technology, coupled with the ongoing
need to incorporate legislative-mandated changes, required the constant
training and retraining of the workforce. The Agency was thus
faced with a training dilemma common to large organizations:
how to effectively and efficiently provide frequent training to
a large, geographically dispersed employee population.
Solving this dilemma presented the Agency with a challenge common
to corporate and government trainers – how to provide effective
training at the least cost at the right time. While classroom
training remained a vital part of training strategy, the Agency
recognized the limitations of a strict reliance on classroom training.
Traveling to a centralized location for training was not always
possible, and cost and timeliness become factors when many employees
must be trained quickly. Technological advances provided new
tools to the trainer, offering a diversity of methodologies from
which to choose. Determining which technologies to implement,
the Agency considered cost, subject matter, time constraints, and
the fact that people have different learning styles and do not respond
equally to the same approach.
The search for solutions to the training delivery dilemma had been
ongoing for years. During that time, training materials were
redesigned and various approaches using computer-based training
implemented. The focus on technology-based solutions began
in 1993, and to identify what the Agency needed to accomplish, almost
two years of contacts and visits were completed with private industry
and other government agencies (including the Ford Motor Company,
the Federal Aviation Administration, the Xerox Corporation, the
United States Post Office, and AT&T). Eventually, it was
identified that these factors would be important for the Agency
to focus on:
·
Allow for more economical and efficient training;
·
Improve timeliness and consistency; and,
·
Maintain or even improve training quality and effectiveness.
Simultaneously, the Agency was embarking on the IWS/LAN installation
initiative to provide networked computers in lieu of the mainframe-linked
“dumb” terminals that were then standard. The combination
of extensive benchmarking, advent of the IWS/LAN rollout, and the
continued demands for training helped spur a rethinking and reengineering
of training delivery methodologies. The result was a hybrid
approach using a variety of emerging technologies, each of which
was used to address different training needs.
Terminal-based Training:
Phoenix Lessons
An early and primitive form of computer-based training which had
been a mainstay in training for years, it was used especially for
portions of entry-level and system enhancement training. Since
personal computers were not even a consideration when the original
program was acquired, these computer-based training had to be resident
on a mainframe computer and accessed via “dumb” terminals by employees.
While available to all employees at most locations, the 200 or so
lessons eventually developed for use on the system were simplistic
and highly text oriented with very limited interactivity.
This technologically archaic system has been superseded with the
advent of personal computers and the IWS/LAN rollout, but was still
in use in a few locations as late as early 2000. With newer
technology, OT began to convert all of the old Phoenix Lessons to
newer formats, and by mid 2000 this conversion was completed.
Personal Computer-based
Training: Multimedia/CD-ROM
The proliferation of personal computers (PCs) in the 1990s and advances
made in multimedia and CD-ROM technology made essential their consideration
as a potential training tool. While a technological advance
over the old terminals, the stand-alone non-networked PC was ultimately
only a super-charged terminal; CD-ROMs offered the individual employee
more information than ever before and a spruced up interface, but
still had the fundamental limitation of little true interactivity.
It did a lot more (e.g., multi-media capability), but possessed
the same limitations of being applicable primarily to training projects
with a reasonably stable subject matter, large audiences, and common
training needs. However, even with these limitations, it did
have its successes.
For example, the roughly 10,000 employees whose duties include responding
to some 58 million or more calls every year to the national 800
number required a large amount of training, on the same subject
matter, with the vast majority of them working in large, centralized
PSCs or TSCs. Multimedia capable PCs were provided to several
sites, and a customer service program was piloted with some 4,000
students. Post training evaluations of these employees yielded
an over 95 percent acceptance rate of the content and delivery mode.
Based on the results of this pilot, the Agency acquired over 4,000
additional multimedia capable PCs.
The Agency subsequently developed a number of other customized multimedia
programs including lessons on the Privacy Act and disclosure requirements,
stress management, disability entitlement factors, Social Security
program orientation and solvency, and additional training in customer
service. This internal development of software was in addition
to the many existing off-the-shelf software packages already used,
thus allowing for a greater scope of materials available to the
Agency for training purposes. These packages included portions
of a management curriculum, general and basic skills lessons, and
other lessons applicable to disability/medical examining personnel
such as courseware on anatomy and physiology.
As improvements to the IT systems architecture progressed, multimedia/CD-ROM
technology has now been relegated as an alternate delivery method
when slow response times, poor Internet performance, or other problems
made the use of online training methods less desirable. It
has been superseded with the advent of the networked environment.
The amount of information now available has exploded exponentially,
and interactivity, the main limitation of both terminal and PC based
training, was now made possible.
Network-based Training:
Intranet/Internet
The advent of PCs, LANs, and the Intranet made network-based training
a reality. New net-based tools were selected to meet current
and future requirements for the Agency’s training environment and
technological infrastructure. Staff was trained in new authoring
tools and converted old mainframe-based lessons to the new Web-based
delivery platform. Additional net-based “off-the-shelf” lessons
were also purchased and piloted before being made widely accessible
to employees.
As an interim step while the national Intranet infrastructure was
being developed, OT leased commercial off-the-shelf courses for
local access networks (LANs). [39] The courseware was loaded on local
servers and made available to employees’ workstations. The
preparation for making this training available to field office locations
involved coordination between various components in the Agency to
integrate the courseware into the IWS/LAN configuration and to assess
the impact on the Agency’s infrastructure. The courseware
was approved for use on the national IWS/LAN platform beginning
with the March 1998 installations.
In 1994, the Office of Systems began the Independent Workstation
Learning (IWL) initiative to provide computer-based training to
its employees at their workstations through the use of their LAN.
The initiative promoted continuous learning at the desktop and embodies
the concept of just-in-time training. Beginning in early 1997,
renamed the e-Learning initiative, it was extended throughout the
Agency through the establishment of the national Intranet.
All employees in offices with the IWS/LAN installation completed
have access to e-Learning.
In recognition of the success of the e-Learning initiative, it received
the 1997 National Performance Review’s Hammer Award and the 1998
Government Computer News Award. These awards were received
for the development of the online training system and giving employees
control and responsibility for their own training and development
by promoting continuous education opportunities.
With the continual development of the Intranet infrastructure, as
part of the Intranet training delivery initiative, the Agency purchased
and installed a web-based training server that provided interactive
training courseware and materials over the Intranet. Courseware
included office automation training as well as in-house developed
programmatic-specific courses for claims representatives, teleservice
representatives, and other front line employees.
The Agency developed a simple but comprehensive approach to employee
training for non-supervisory personnel. Designed to help employees
gain the tools they need to enrich their development and improve
the operation of the organization, it included competency-based
training models and self-assessment tools. [40]
They were supported by the Individual Learning Account
concept, wherein employees were given eight hours of duty time from
which to draw in order to take the training they feel they need
for competency reinforcement based on the results of their self-assessment.
This new approach has not yet been adopted by the Agency, and a
recent pilot will help determine the effectiveness of this new methodology.
[41]
Another significant initiative taking advantage of the Intranet
and the Internet was the SSA Online University. This allowed
employees to access a large number of web-based training courses
at their own time, covering a wide range of topics from information
technology to management skills to personal development. Employees
can access the university from any place with Internet access (home,
work, and library), or from their own workstations through the Intranet.
This initiative enhanced ongoing training and development opportunities
for employees by improving the accessibility of quality training
resources for their use.
And lastly, as a backdrop to these training initiatives, the Agency
continued to make progress in making all class offerings accessible
to employees with disabilities. OT developed templates to
convert all courses into a format accessible by software such as
JAWS. In addition, the OT web site was redesigned to be accessible
to employees with disabilities.
Interactive
Video Teletraining (IVT)
Designed as a distance-learning network using an interactive one-way
digital satellite technology with a viewer response system, the
IVT system was a one-way video, two-way audio system using compressed
digital satellite technology. The system used keypads with
built in microphones to allow instructors and students to communicate
on a real-time basis with few of the limitations normally imposed
by geographical separation. It was used for in-service, managerial,
and entry-level training on a daily basis. By overcoming the
barrier of geographical separation, the IVT program provided consistency
in training (reducing duplicative efforts), significant monetary
savings (no travel necessary), and helped reduce the glass ceiling
effect for individuals who can not travel due to personal/family
situations (allowing career advancement without requiring long trips
away from home).
IVT was the first major acquisition, and became arguably the Agency’s
centerpiece, in its diverse approach to delivering training.
As a result of the benchmarking undertaken in 1993 and 1994, a proposal
was made in early 1995 for a small pilot of 30 downlink sites to
test IVT’s effectiveness and determine how the technology could
best be used. The pilot was successful, and a demonstration
for the Executive Staff in June 1995 resulted their support to proceed
with limited implementation in a three-phased approach:
·
Phase I: Install a broadcast
studio in Baltimore and 220 downlink (receiver) sites;
·
Phase II: Install IVT in all remaining
Agency sites; and,
·
Phase III: Make IVT accessible at the desktop.
Initially designed as a limited pilot, IVT
quickly mushroomed into a fully functional system. Phase I
ran from late 1995 through 1996; a broadcast studio was constructed
in Baltimore along with 220 downlink sites (scattered throughout
the country, including Puerto Rico, Alaska, and Hawaii). Studio
1 presented its first broadcast in March 1996 to approximately 150
downlink sites. At that time, the broadcast signal was sent
via a terrestrial line to the Federal Aviation Administration’s
uplink in Oklahoma City for transmission through an AT&T satellite.
From 1996 until mid-2000, Phase II progressed and the IVT network
grew into a nationwide system with five studios and almost 830 operational
downlink sites. Already the largest IVT system in the
Federal Government when it was only 220 sites, the Agency expanded
still further. In accordance with the original plan, the long-term
goal was to provide IVT directly to each individual PC workstation.
With the inexorable progress of technology, implementation was put
on hold pending planned improvements to the system infrastructure
that will supply sufficient bandwidth to permit the sending of full
motion, full screen video to individual PCs.
Utilization of IVT has been widespread and significant. While
most systems restrict audience size to 30 to 60 participants, the
Agency routinely served audiences of 300 to 500 viewers with no
known detriment to the learning process. On many occasions
there were in excess of 1,000 viewers for a single training program.
In addition, while teletraining programs in other organizations
consisted of standard courses broadcast repeatedly (e.g., entry-level
training falls largely in this category), much of the Agency’s programming
resulted from an emphasis on training that is timely and meaningful,
with new training courses continually being developed and broadcast
to coincide with changing workloads and procedures. Programs
were repeated only as needed to accommodate different time zones.
Great emphasis was also placed upon the use of interaction as a
key to providing a quality training experience. Most courses
were internally developed, but the Agency had partnered with outside
vendors and groups such as Harvard University’s Schools of Government
and Business.
During its first two years, over 1,750 hours of training representing
an estimated 73,000 training instances for Agency and state disability
determination service employees were broadcast. Because of
the initial successes with the training, it quickly led to the construction
of a second broadcast studio in 1997; it was soon apparent that
IVT was a valuable training tool. But it was also apparent
that its effectiveness was not maximized because it reached too
few of the primary customers for whom it was intended – field office
employees.
By 1997, three separate analysis (the last done by an independent
third party) of IVT’s cost and business effectiveness was confirmed;
they found no significant difference in learning between IVT and
classroom training and documented that there would be significant
cost benefits in expanding IVT. Approval and funding was secured
in 1997 to expand the system by an additional 610 downlink sites
and to add three additional broadcast studios. This expansion
included the construction of an uplink facility in Baltimore so
that the connection through the Federal Aviation Administration
was no longer needed. Additionally, it included the change
to a different satellite, yet to be launched.
The new downlink sites were selected with the goal of making IVT
accessible to the largest number of employees possible. Installations
began in late 1997 and were virtually completed as of August 2000.
[42] Part of the delay can be attributed to problems
with the original satellite; it fell victim to a solar flare in
early 1997 requiring the re-pointing of the satellite dishes at
every downlink site and limiting transponder availability.
In addition, technology upgrades and the transition to a new satellite
resulted in delays in launching the new satellite. When it
was finally launched in August 1998, the rocket malfunctioned and
was destroyed, prompting yet another round of dish re-pointing and
delays.
As part of the upgrade process, each of the original 220 sites received
new equipment, and all sites (new and old) were equipped with a
second receiver. Having five studios meant that simultaneous
broadcasts became a possibility, and a second receiver would allow
downlink sites to receive two different programs at the same time.
The new broadcast studios, located in Kansas City (Studio 3), Atlanta
(Studio 4), and Dallas (Studio 5), were designed with Studio 1 as
the model, but incorporated technological advancements since the
first studio in equipment. Each of the new studios agreed
to take the lead in piloting one of the major entry-level courses
for SSA field employees. Atlanta became responsible for Title
XVI Claims Representative training, and Dallas and Kansas City for
Title II Claims Representative training.
These entry-level classes were traditionally done in classroom sessions
averaging 12-15 students each, and they required participants to
travel to a central location for the duration of the 7-12 week classes.
The pilot IVT classes of 30 students each began in the fall of 1998
and were completed by January 1999. Although all three studios
limited daily instruction via IVT to four hours or less, each initially
used a different approach in integrating IVT instruction with regular
classroom instruction. Subsequent offerings have homogenized
the process so that while class length still varies, all three classes
are now completely done via IVT. Entry-level classes over
IVT now have up to 200 or more students, representing a significant
savings in both travel costs and instructor salaries.
Once the regional studios became operational and more downlink sites
were installed, the value of IVT for training grew with its own
momentum. By FY 1999, IVT was used to present over 2,000 hours
of training to a total documented audience of over 119,000. [43] The total amount of training presented in FY
2000 was projected to be over 3,200 hours with a documented audience
of about 161,000. In addition to the growth in usage, studies
showed that training presented via IVT was effective. But,
as was the case when the 1997 expansion began, a critical problem
was that IVT still did not reach everyone. In specific, only
about 50 percent of Agency field offices were equipped with IVT
infrastructure. Those without were still relying on in-office
ad hoc instruction or video tapes of the IVT programs supplied by
other offices.
During 1999 and early 2000, cost benefit analyses supported proposals
to complete the original goal of bringing IVT to every Agency site.
Approval was given for this full expansion, but budget limitations
meant that only part of it could be funded as of October 2000.
Accordingly, plans were underway to add another 135 downlink sites
to the system as well as a sixth regional studio to be located in
Auburn, Washington. The expectation was that most of these
new downlink sites will be installed by the end of 2000, eventually
leaving approximately 535 Agency sites without direct IVT access.
In spite of years of studies documenting the effectiveness of video
training in the private and academic sectors, the Agency commissioned
its own studies from an independent consultant. These studies,
on-going experience, and third-party evaluations showed these benefits
resulting from IVT:
·
Reduction in total training time by as much as 28 percent
for individual courses;
·
Reduction in the costs for travel and salaries;
·
Trainees learned in their offices, making them more productive
earlier;
·
Significant reduction in costs in priority and labor-intensive
training;
·
More expeditious and consistent dissemination of new laws,
regulations, and procedures; and
·
No difference in the level of learning achieved.
This last finding was most significant; direct comparisons between
IVT and classroom sessions of the same training showed there was
no statistically significant difference in trainee performance and
learning. In addition, employee reaction to IVT has been favorable.
In only a few years, the Agency has moved from concept to operation
the largest and most dynamic IVT system in the Federal Government.
However, the real achievement lied in the programming, its acceptance
by the SSA community, and the substantial cost savings. IVT
has enabled timely responses to a number of high level and potentially
labor-intensive training efforts with significant reductions in
monetary and human resource costs. The learning paradigm of
training “whenever we can get it” has changed to “delivery as we
need it.” Three examples illustrate this significant change:
·
The Agency needed to train 500 new Hearing Officers within
a short period, and the usual two-week classroom course with 25
students at a time would have been too costly and cumbersome to
put together on short notice. By using IVT, all 500 were trained
at one time with little to no costs in travel or lodging.
Subsequent evaluations showed no reduction in the training’s effectiveness;
IVT had changed the old concepts of having to travel to a central
site and needing long blocks of time for large training efforts.
·
As part of its efforts to reengineer the disability process,
the Agency presented a 16-hour training session to over 15,000 Federal
and state employees. Using IVT, the Agency presented the training
in 35 sessions, saving time and money while obtaining a higher degree
of consistency in the message. In addition, for the first
time ever state, regional offices, PSCs, and hearings employees
were trained together, offering opportunities to learn from each
other and gain an appreciation of each other’s roles.
·
In spring 2000, President Clinton signed new legislation
that had an extremely short period for implementation concerning
the annual earnings test for beneficiaries. Using IVT, training
was conducted nationally for field employees within one week after
the legislation was signed.
While technology and IVT will never totally replace traditional
classroom training, there will always be a need for a variety of
training delivery methods. The use of technology has clearly
becoming a dominant factor in training delivery within the Agency
as its advantages become apparent to more and more of its managers
and employees.
Physical
Infrastructure & Security
he Social Security Administration (SSA) operates
over 1,300 field offices in all 50 states plus Puerto Rico, the
Virgin Islands, and other American territories. In addition,
there are another ten regional offices, six processing centers,
36 teleservice centers, and a large headquarters complex in Baltimore,
and it is clear that the Agency occupies and manages a large amount
of real estate. But physical infrastructure is more than just
the number of buildings managed; it also includes the actual physical
work environment, including furniture, hardware, and security.
From the earliest strategic plan through the current plan, the Agency
has focused on employee satisfaction, and has defined one of its
goals to “Create a Nurturing Environment for SSA Employees.”
In line with this focus on employee well being, the Agency engaged
in a number of initiatives from 1993 to 2000 to improve infrastructure
and physical security.
The Office of Facilities Management (OFM) manages the Agency’s facilities
programs. The OFM directs the Agency’s real property program,
including short- and long-range facilities planning; design, construction,
and leasing of the headquarters facilities, facilities maintenance,
repair and construction projects, and policy development related
to these operations. It works closely with the General Services
Administration (GSA) to help administer offices in the field.
Upgrade
of the Headquarters Complex
n 1993, the Agency and GSA jointly developed
a long-range strategy to upgrade the Agency’s headquarters complex
buildings in the Woodlawn area of Baltimore, Maryland. The
280-acre, ten government-owned buildings [44] were beginning to show their age; most of the buildings
were built in the early 1960s to 1970. Major renovations were
needed, and when construction began on a new facility to consolidate
the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) to another site,
the moving of HCFA employees out of the east campus buildings [45] gave the Agency the window of opportunity to initiate
these major renovations.
In 1995, the Woodlawn Master Plan was published, and it established
short- and long-term goals to deal with issues such as a theme for
the complex, building facades, pedestrian and vehicular circulation,
site entry and identification, internal organization and circulation,
and solar/day lighting issues. This document became the Agency
and GSA’s vision for the future of the Woodlawn Complex, and it
served as the basis from which designs for campus-wide renovations
were developed. Headquarters’ building redesign and renovation
were scheduled as follows:
Headquarters
Building |
Contract
Awarded |
Design
Completed |
Construction |
Estimated
Cost |
Security
West Building[46] |
1994 |
|
Completed
in 1997 |
$30
million |
East
High & Low Rise [47] |
1995 |
1996
|
1996-1999 |
$21
million |
Annex
[48] |
1995 |
1997 |
1999-2001
(to begin after East buildings) |
$38
million |
Operations
& new Child Care Center[49] |
1996 |
1999 |
2002-2005 |
$126
million |
Renovations included heating, ventilation, and air conditioning
(HVAC) retrofits; replacement of the brick façade, roof,
windows, electrical distribution equipment; removal of all known
hazardous materials (e.g., asbestos, lead paint); installation of
fire sprinkler systems, energy efficient lights, skylights, motors,
and pumps; and, other repairs necessary to bring the buildings into
compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
These state of the art renovations will provide a modern, safe,
and healthy work environment. Specialized spaces were designed
into the buildings (e.g., conference centers; training centers and
training rooms; appliance centers; and audio-visual studios), and
employees were provided with new, improved workstation systems furniture.
Equally important, these renovations installed and supported the
technological infrastructure necessary for the IWS/LAN rollout.
Renovations for the remaining buildings of the headquarters complex
are anticipated to follow after the completion of the renovation
of the Operations building. These remaining buildings include
the West High Rise, West Low Rise, and Altmeyer Buildings.
The completion of these renovations will result in a state of the
art workplace environment that Agency employees can be proud of,
and confident of their health and safety. In addition to the
actual physical environment, the Agency also implemented other safety
initiatives such as in the area of fire protection.
Fire
Protection Initiatives
wo events in the 1990s significantly changed
the way the Agency’s fire protection activities were conducted:
the delegation of authority for control of buildings from GSA to
the Agency and significant reduction in the GSA fire protection
staff. [50] The Agency became responsible
for operating large buildings nationwide, and had to quickly develop
the staff and skills necessary to do so effectively. While
the Agency did have experience managing real estate in the headquarters
complex, the regions were not as well prepared.
In 1993, Agency staff completed the design and installation of a
new fire alarm system throughout the entire headquarters complex;
the new system significantly enhanced the Agency’s ability to provide
fire alarm coverage throughout the headquarters complex buildings.
In addition, the Agency undertook various other initiatives to ensure
that fire protection in its buildings nationwide complied with the
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1999 standards and fire
alarm systems.
Environmental
Health Programs
n an attempt to provide a physical environment
that promoted the health and well being of its employees, the Agency
began to assess how the work environment affected the health of
its employees. The Agency established the Environmental Protection
Program in 1996; it was designed to ensure that all employees were
housed in a safe, healthy work environment. The program expanded
on existing environmental health and safety (EHS) programs by obtaining
information about building systems and employee concerns, and to
identify and resolve existing and potential problems. These
initiatives impacted core business processes and customer interfaces
in beneficial ways that were not originally foreseen.
Many of the initiatives were designed to enhance the physical environment
and educate employees so that they could better understand and respond
to arising EHS issues. While targeted towards employees, building
improvements often benefited the American public who came and visited
any of the Agency’s 1,300 plus facilities by eliminating or reducing
the risks of hazardous situations. The heightened awareness
and state of readiness fostered by employees regarding EHS issues
allowed the effective and timely resolution of any rising EHS problems.
Employee satisfaction, and hence productivity, increased with the
reduction to the risks of employee injuries and property loss.
The initiatives focused on areas like: (1) Industrial hygiene
(identification, remediation, prevention, and management for air
quality, water quality, and asbestos management); (2) Comprehensive
assessments of EHS programs in field offices (designed to provide
initial baseline data on EHS performance, identification of EHS
non-compliance, and implementation of interim/long-term corrective
action); (3) Headquarters preventive maintenance program (preventive
maintenance assessments initially focus on headquarters buildings,
with long-range plans to expand to delegated facilities nationwide);
and, (4) Education and awareness initiatives (e.g., hazard communication
training; cardiopulmonary resuscitation training; user friendly
furniture training; communication awareness). Many of the
initiatives led to significant gains in safety and satisfaction
in many field offices.
Recycling
and Energy Efficiency
hroughout the 1990s, the Agency has remained
at the forefront of the Federal Government’s recycling program,
consistently exceeding the goals set forth by the Clinton Administration.
[51] In 1997, the Deputy Commissioner for Finance, Assessment,
and Management (DCFAM) was named the Agency Environmental Executive
(AEE), responsible for sponsoring and chairing events that provide
educational opportunities for Federal employees and awareness of
environmental issues for the public. In conjunction with the
White House Task Force on Recycling, the Agency developed a strategic
plan to implement the Clinton Administration’s recycling goals.
From November 1997 through 1999, the AEE chaired the Federal “America
Recycles Day,” held annually on November 15. A joint effort
of by White House Task Force members, the Agency organized, monitored,
and administered the activity, soliciting participation from both
Federal agencies and the private sector.
In April 2000, the Agency sponsored a recycling awareness and energy
conservation exhibit on the Mall in Washington, D.C. Agency
employees and its recycling mascot, “Recycle Billy,” provided information
on the Agency’s recycling programs, and distributed mini-recycling
bins, recycling pins, and a wide variety of recycling and energy
conservation literature. The exhibit was one of the most popular
attractions of the over 50 booths sponsored by other Federal agencies
and private sector groups.
President Clinton has released various Presidential Executive Orders
(EOs) involving recycling and environmental issues, and various
initiatives within the Agency were implemented because of these
EOs. In 1998, EO 13101 [52] resulted
in the implementation of awareness training in teleservice centers
(TSCs) and program service centers (PSCs), bringing about the appointment
of recycling coordinators at each of these locations. In 2000,
EO 13148 [53] resulted in the Agency reviewing
its existing environmental management systems and auditing programs
purporting to promote pollution prevention.
As a consequence of the training and awareness fostered by these
and other initiatives, Agency facilities were well equipped to recycle.
For example, the headquarters complex has the capability to recycle
aluminum cans, plastic bottles, glass bottles, white paper, mixed
paper, magazines, newspaper, phone books, cardboard, styrofoam,
wood pallets and scraps, fluorescent lamps, electronic ballasts,
printer toner cartridges, and batteries. The Agency also promoted
recycling with its outside contractors; stringent recycling requirements
were built into contracts for services at Agency facilities.
In addition to recycling, the Agency has been proactive in meeting
the goals established by the Clinton Administration in regards to
energy efficiency. The Energy Policy Act of 1992 and EO 13123
[54] set the goals, and the Agency strategies for meeting these
goals were carried out through a combination of energy audits, energy
conservation projects, and prospectus level projects throughout
its facilities management.
The Agency designated a Senior Energy Manager who met regularly
with Department of Energy representatives and participated on the
Interagency Energy Management Task Force. In recognition for
its progress, the SSA Senior Energy Manager received the “1999 Federal
Energy and Water Management Award” from the Federal Interagency
Energy Policy Committee for exceptional accomplishments in the efficient
use of energy in the Federal sector. Institutionally, building/facilities
managers were established at every Agency delegated facility, and
they were responsible for understanding energy regulations and guidelines
and for implementing energy conservation measures, monitoring energy
consumption, and evaluating costs and savings.
Environmental Accomplishments
Agency accomplishments in environmental issues included:
· Installed motion sensors in the headquarters complex,
Metro West, Northeast PSC, Mid-Atlantic PSC, Great Lakes PSC, Western
PSC, and Wilkes-Barre Data Operations Center to save lighting costs;
· Installed energy efficient motors in mechanical space
of delegated buildings;
· Installed energy efficient lighting, including compact
fluorescent lamps in place of incandescent lamps, at all delegated
space;
· Completed the “Campus Cross-Tie” project, providing
emergency power to the headquarters complex with the generators
from the National Computer Center;
· Retired
and replaced old, inefficient central plants and equipment with
new energy efficient, environmentally friendly equipment with installed
energy management systems; [55]
· Installed
lighting controls;[56]
· Installed
variable speed drives for pumps, cooling tower fans, and air handlers;
[57]
· Replaced automatic sliding doors with revolving doors
at the Mid-Atlantic PSC and headquarters complex (revolving doors
provide a positive seal at all exterior entrances and energy savings
by preventing the loss of conditioned air);
· Installed water conservation equipment in the form of
low flow aerators (all delegated buildings), and low flow toilets
(headquarters and Mid-Atlantic PSC); and
· Performed energy audits at all delegated buildings to
assist in identifying and prioritizing energy conservation projects.
In FY 1999, six comprehensive energy and water audits were completed
at delegated facilities. Most of these audits were accomplished
using utility energy service contracts, and from these audits, the
Agency initiated numerous projects in 2000 in the headquarters complex
and at the Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic PSCs. These projects
included new lighting, heating, ventilation, air conditioning, lighting
controls, and variable speed drives; completion of these projects
was projected to be FY 2001.
In addition, sustainable building designing was in progress in several
large Agency buildings. In conjunction with GSA, the Agency
completed renovations in its delegated buildings with values in
excess of $30 million. The vast majority of these renovations
are GSA-funded prospectus level projects, and while not exclusively
energy projects, they significantly affect the energy baseline by
installing: 1) Energy efficient central heating and air conditioning
plants; 2) Energy efficient windows and doors; 3) New computer-based
central energy management systems; and 4) Natural day lighting and
lighting controls.
The Agency also renovated existing buildings with energy efficient
technologies such as thermal storage, efficient lighting, co-generation,
and passive solar technology. GSA submitted and received approval
for a prospectus project to build a new, standalone childcare facility
at the Woodlawn, Maryland, complex; it will be designated the Agency’s
showcase facility. Renewable technologies will be incorporated
into the design of this facility, including ground source heat pumps,
natural day lighting, and passive solar design.
Energy Training Accomplishments
The Agency took very seriously its investment in its facilities
staff on issues of energy efficiency, and thus sent its building
managers and staff to attend various training classes and conferences
on such topics as life cycle cost analysis, alternative fuels, lighting
controls, and demand side management practices. Agency employees
also attended GSA regional conferences to become familiar with current
strategies in GSA’s program for reducing energy consumption.
The Agency has participated in Department of Energy (DOE) interactive
training programs to ensure the presence of a trained energy manager
in every Agency delegated facility. The Agency scheduled additional
training designed to help energy managers track energy usage and
cost.
Agency employees nationwide were educated on the need for and benefits
of energy conservation through an awareness program via e-mail,
newsletters, and the Agency print magazine, OASIS.
Employee
Workstation Improvements
s early as 1983, the growing emphasis on
automation began raising safety issues for employees. Accelerated
dependence on computers to process workloads resulted in a labor
arbitrator’s ruling mandating the Agency to install user friendly
workstations in all field and teleservice offices where video display
monitors were used.
Throughout 1993 and 1994, extensive studies and negotiations with
AFGE resulted in 13 new workstation designs based on employee functions.
These designs incorporated a number of user friendly features, such
as electrically adjustable tables to alleviate health problems associated
with extensive use of data processing equipment. In May 1994,
the Agency began installing the new systems furniture workstations
in field offices using furniture procured from the Federal Prison
Industries (FPI), the Agency’s mandated furniture source.
Because the original arbitration mandate declared that the furniture
be installed in all field offices within five years, the project
required expeditious handling. Discussions with FPI revealed
that they would be unable to supply the furniture in the quantities
within the timeframes required. As a result, FPI granted a
waiver for the Agency to contract with private sector vendors to
supply some of the furniture to the Agency’s field offices.
On September 20, 1995, Herman Miller, a furniture store, was awarded
a 4-year contract for installation of user friendly furniture in
field offices throughout the nation. This contract, the largest
of its kind awarded by any Federal agency as of 1995, was managed
within the Agency from initiation (development of requirements)
to evaluation of bids to final award. A team was established
to develop the work plans and to implement the contract. The
team, assembled from diverse components within the Agency, worked
swiftly to develop and implement processes, procedures, guidelines,
case controls, and budget mechanisms for using the new contract
to install ergonomic furniture.
Eventually, it was decided that FPI would concentrate on providing
and installing furniture at the large sites (e.g., PSCs and headquarters)
and providing this service in a few field offices. Herman
Miller was used to provide furniture for most field offices, hearings
offices, TSCs, and other smaller offices. Though Herman Miller’s
contract was ending in 1999, many field offices had not yet resolved
pressing space and lease issues and were unable to receive and install
the new furniture. Since FPI was still fully engaged with
the larger sites, the initial waiver was extended for 2 years, and
this new contract included streamlined procedures to shorten timeframes
for furniture design while reducing the Agency’s procurement-related
workload.
Using the two furniture sources, FPI and Herman Miller, the Agency
installed 46,946 workstations in 1,436 field office sites (96 percent
of the workforce) with user friendly furniture.
[58] In addition, 8,751 workstations have been installed
in the PSCs; 95 percent of PSC employees enjoy user friendly furniture
workstations as of FY 2000.
Installation of the user friendly furniture in headquarters components
continues, linked to the master housing plan and renovations of
the various buildings and properties housing headquarters components.
Over 6,500 workstations have been installed, and this portion of
the project is expected to extend over an additional five years.
Modern Workstation Training
The objective of modern workstation training was to educate Agency
employees in the proper use and adjustment of workstations to provide
greater comfort and reduce the number of physical injuries.
The training initiative is the result of recommendations from a
job safety analysis conducted in 1995, recommendations later confirmed
through feedback from employee focus groups.
In 1998, there was a pilot study during which the Public Health
Service conducted several forms of ergonomic workstation training
at the Agency’s field offices. An independent contractor evaluated
results, and based on results of the pilot study the contractor
recommended that the Agency’s approach be a cost-effective combination
of train-the-trainer and self-instructional pamphlets. In
April 1999, the DCFAM and the Office of Operations Management, along
with the Technological Environment Advisory Committee
[59] agreed to this approach.
Modular Furniture Retrofit Project
Prior to development of the fully adjustable systems workstations,
the Agency installed modular furniture workstations in field offices
as well as first generation (not electrically adjustable) systems
furniture. Although state-of-the-art at the time of installation,
it lacked the level of adjustment the current workstations contain.
Funding for continuation of modular furniture retrofits beyond the
pilot sites was limited. Careful analysis was made of risk
exposure, minimizing expenditures for the project while maximizing
benefits to the Agency. As a result, retrofits were generally
done during an office relocation since this eliminates duplicative
site preparation costs and minimizes disruption of an office by
furniture reconfiguration. This approach kept costs low and
within budget.
Physical
Security
s a direct result of the Oklahoma City Bombing
and a perceived increase in violence in the Agency’s field operations,
physical security became a salient issue for many employees.
The relative safety of the work environment was no longer taken
for granted, and perhaps the greatest stride in employee security
was the raising of awareness fostered by both tragedy and Agency
educational programs. Since 1996, the Agency has had a well-developed,
nationwide physical security program.
In 1995, the Agency employed a security-consulting firm to conduct
physical security surveys of its regional offices, PSCs, field offices,
TSCs, and Office of Hearings and Appeals (OHA) hearings offices.
From the firm’s findings and recommendations, a matrix of the top
ten security improvements most frequently recommended in the reports
were developed and used as a guide to direct, develop, and fund
improvements to field office security.
In addition, the National Health and Safety Partnership Committee
for Security (NHSPCS) sponsored the first SSA/AFGE Physical Security
Conference in 1995 featuring speakers, panels, and breakout sessions
under the guidance of union and management facilitators. The
conference allowed managers, union officials, members of other federal
agencies, and local law enforcement participants to voice their
concerns about security issues. They identified training/informational
needs and shared ideas on solutions on such issues as employee and
customer/client safety and security, both inside and outside the
office. The goal of the conference was to produce a realistic
set of recommendations for improving security. Attendees identified
major physical security concerns and issues facing employees and
proposed solutions that became the focus of subsequent NHSPCS activity.
A second security-consulting firm hired in 1996 conducted further
physical security surveys at sites not covered by the first survey
(e.g., Agency resident stations, contact stations, and OHA satellite
offices). Based on this firm’s findings and recommendations,
the Agency identified further areas of improvement for employee
safety and provided additional funding to improve security at these
facilities.
In 1998, the Agency established a security tactical plan and provided
funding of $15.2 million to its field offices, PSCs, TSCs, OHA offices,
regional offices, and the data operations center for additional
guards, physical security upgrades, and enhancements professional
security services nationwide. Physical security upgrades included
such things as plastic windows and emergency alarm buttons in interviewing
booths.
In addition, the Agency contracted with another security-consulting
firm in 1999 to conduct physical security surveys of 154 field offices
that had relocated since August 1997. Using this firm’s recommendations,
funding was provided to enhance the security at these relocated
offices. All of these surveys gave the Agency a large amount
of data and information to base future improvements. The Agency
developed a database to capture information on the status of the
over 14,000 recommendations made by the security-consulting firms
for increasing security nationwide.
As a further service to its employees, the Agency used the Security
Information Bulletins via the Intranet and the OASIS magazine
to communicate safety findings and suggestions. The Agency
also issued annual reminders to its managers to update and discuss
Security Action Plans and Occupant Emergency Plans with their office
staffs and the union. [60] The plans
help in these ways:
·
Direct employees’ actions in emergency situations;
·
Prompt coordinated steps to be taken to obtain assistance
when needed; and,
·
Ensure that employees were aware of proper protective and
emergency procedures including anticipating, controlling, and reporting
demonstrations, sit-ins, and civil disorders that may occur in or
near the office/facility.
Plans were tailored specifically to each
facility’s unique situation and security needs, and were annually
updated and reviewed with the staff.
The Agency worked with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the
Defense Security Service to shorten the time needed to complete
suitability checks on contract employees. These actions permit
electronic checks to be conducted within hours rather than months,
and the Agency implemented electronic screening of contract employees
and child care providers through the use of the National Crime Information
Center, Integrated Automatic Fingerprint Identification System,
the Defense Security Service, the Agency database, and the Immigration
and Naturalization Service.
All of these measures to foster employee confidence and security
were undertaken by the Agency to protect its most important asset,
its employees. While Oklahoma City cast a shadow over all
Federal agencies and removed the innocence of Federal employees
in regards to their own personal safety, some positive actions did
result from this terrible tragedy. Increased physical security
initiatives and awareness education programs have been instrumental
in creating a protected work environment and the safer employee.
Internal
Communications
uring the 1993-2000 period, the Agency restructured
and refocused its management-employee communications program.
A new emphasis was placed on providing more timely communications
with employees and on opening more direct communications channels
between the Commissioner of Social Security and the Agency’s workforce.
Moreover, advances in technology presented new information vehicles
for the Agency’s communicators to use. The mass utilization
of e-mail and the eventual networking of the vast majority of the
Agency into the IWS/LAN national network created instantaneous connections.
Communications that once took weeks at great cost were disseminated
in minutes for next to nothing. More importantly, issues that
were formerly deemed unimportant to employees (in part because of
the costs associated with mass communication) were now addressed
freely with the national audience of all SSA employees. They
felt a connection with the entire organization, and had a sense
of investment with the Agency.
Aside from this global view of communication, individual components
within the Agency also took advantage of the new communication avenues
open to them. Each component set up its own internal communication/e-mail
networks to spread news and information to their own employees,
and often times developed issue/component specific e-newsletters
for wider audiences.
Examples of information vehicles used by
the Agency included:
OASIS: the Agency’s magazine
– Published quarterly, OASIS was the primary direct informational
vehicle used by the Agency to convey to its widespread employees
important actions, issues, and initiatives. Before the advent
of e-mail and the IWS/LAN rollout, OASIS was almost the only
national vehicle of information to communicate from headquarters
to the rest of the Agency.
Commissioner’s Broadcasts – In 1995,
in response to the tragic bombing of the Federal building in Oklahoma
City that claimed the lives of more than 100 people (including 16
Agency employees) the Commissioner of Social Security issued a nationwide
e-mail broadcast to share breaking news with our workforce.
Updates on the recovery efforts in the aftermath of the bombing
were issued in the succeeding week.
Deputy Commissioner’s Broadcasts –
The Deputy Commissioner has also institutionalized the email vehicle
for broadly communicating with employees on a myriad of topics and
concerns.
Employee response to the communication and to e-mails, then a relatively
new tool, was positive due to appreciation of the speed with which
employees across the nation could be informed. As a result,
the Commissioner decided to make regular use, on an as needed basis,
of e-mail to inform employees about pressing issues and events.
These e-mails became institutionalized as the Commissioner’s Broadcasts.
News Bytes – Approximately 10 months
after the first Commissioner’s Broadcast, the agency inaugurated
the use of News Bytes, a free subscription e-mail newsletter
for any Agency employee with an e-mail address. These provided
brief synopses of general interest news that were not generally
pressing.
Headquarters Happenings (formerly
the Central Office Bulletin) – Aimed specifically at the
Agency’s Baltimore Woodlawn headquarters complex, this e-mail instrument
was used to disseminate all types of information relevant to the
headquarters.
Disability Notes – This regular email
communicates important information of interest to the disability
community about recent developments. It was distributed freely
to those interested in the disability program both within the Agency
and in external agencies and organizations. It was intended
to be informational and not an official expression of policy.
It as available by hard copy, email, and on the Internet. [61]
Security Information Bulletins – SSA
published and distributed advice to Agency employees on matters
affecting their safety by means of these Security Information Bulletins.
They covered various security and safety issues, and offered suggested
actions and initiatives that offices could take to prepare for and
respond to disruptive customers; itemized reminders for parking
lot security, office access controls, and security in restrooms;
and, providing instructions for handling bomb threats or suspicious
items.
In addition to these employee communication initiatives, individual
components also began to further communication with other components.
For instance in April 1998, the Office of the General Counsel (OGC)
and the Office of Hearings (OHA), in an effort to improve effective
communication between the two components, formed the Program Adjudication
& Litigation Workgroup (PALs). The mission of this group
was to coordinate the adjudication and litigation functions involving
Social Security programs, to improve communication and understanding
by developing a shared concept of defensibility, and to enhance
the Agency’s litigation position by improving the quality of decisions,
ensuring the integrity of the adjudication process, and avoiding
damaging court precedents.
The PALs continued to work on other initiatives in an effort to
improve the Agency’s success in litigating transcript litigation.
The Agency is committed to providing information to its own employees.
By involving them in the dialogue of Social Security issues, employees
will feel a greater sense of investment and involvement in their
work, increasing both job satisfaction and a sense of belonging.
The Agency is using all available communications outlets, both old
and new media, to reach its employees.
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